I'm relatively new to this website but I've already read of (on the forums) and bore witness to (in the actual debates) abusing the voting system. It's done a lot restricting votes to only members who have complete 3 full debates and requiring a comment to be posted on why each member voted the way he/she did. There's still a problem of people simply vote bombing others or voting based soley on one's opinion of the topic--with no regard of the actual agruments brought up by the debating parties.

I believe we should implement a system to disregard votes if they are found to be unfair. Votes would only be disregarded if a certain number of flags were raised against it. This is only one proposal and for sure needs some fine tuning but the point I'd like to make is that people can still make unfair votes and something should be done to address this issue. Sure there may be some votes we may not completely agree with but there are many votes which have no reasoning behind the points awarded. We can find examples of this in blank voting comments and comments that make absolutely no reference to the actual debate.

I don't even bother debating on subjects that are vastly unpopular. It's just an uphill struggle, although it's not a problem finding an opponent. Typically i am not really upset if i lose a debate, but sometimes there's a lot of work that goes into it, and it seems a bit outrageous when you should have won, but don't.

If you take a very unpopular position, and do a very good job of it, and your opponent is adequate, you will lose. If you do an outstanding job of it, and your opponent does a piss poor job of it you will have a chance.

In this i give Mirza a lot of credit. He continually takes very unpopular positions and loses a lot but also wins a fair amount. He doesn't deny a debate solely on whether or not he has any shot of winning.

At 3/30/2011 3:43:46 PM, innomen wrote:I don't even bother debating on subjects that are vastly unpopular. It's just an uphill struggle, although it's not a problem finding an opponent. Typically i am not really upset if i lose a debate, but sometimes there's a lot of work that goes into it, and it seems a bit outrageous when you should have won, but don't.

If you take a very unpopular position, and do a very good job of it, and your opponent is adequate, you will lose. If you do an outstanding job of it, and your opponent does a piss poor job of it you will have a chance.

In this i give Mirza a lot of credit. He continually takes very unpopular positions and loses a lot but also wins a fair amount. He doesn't deny a debate solely on whether or not he has any shot of winning.